


Where All My Journeys End

by dancing_satyr



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Bottom!Flint, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 20:12:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancing_satyr/pseuds/dancing_satyr
Summary: James tells Thomas his story.





	Where All My Journeys End

**Author's Note:**

> "Together again  
> It would feel so good to be  
> In your arms  
> Where all my journeys end"
> 
> ~Tracy Chapman, "The Promise"

So there it was.

James imagined that he could see it undulating through the shadows on the floor as if it had oozed out of him and collected there in a sinister puddle. Blood and darkness and rage. Having spoken the truth aloud he should have felt cleansed of it, but no amount of confession would ever entirely purge it from his soul. He was stained.

James hadn’t looked at Thomas once as he recounted his tale. He couldn’t bear to meet that open gaze; just feeling the weight of those eyes on him as he spoke tested his endurance to its limits. Even so, Thomas had asked to hear it and he could not deny him.

How could he deny Thomas his story? All of it had in essence been driven by James’s relentless pursuit of vengeance in the wake of his loss. Thomas deserved to know what Flint had done in his name.

The shadows stopped moving when Thomas crossed the distance of his tiny room to kneel on the floor at James’s feet. He hadn’t realized how aggressively he had been wringing his hands until Thomas’s unfailingly kind ones prized them apart and cradled them in his. They were much rougher now but no less comforting.

“I know it took considerable courage for you to tell me that. Thank you.”

It was the choked quality of Thomas’s voice that ultimately brought James to look at him. The tear tracks on his cheeks glistened in the candlelight and his eyes swam with a grief so fresh and raw that it threatened to reopen James’s own healing wounds.

“I never dreamed that one day I would sit before you to tell it. Perhaps, if I had, I might have made different choices,” James admitted, “choices that would not have hurt you so cruelly.”

James watched as Thomas clenched his eyes shut against a new onslaught of tears, his body heaving with stifled sobs. A dull knife twisted into his gut would have stung less.

He sat silently, allowing Thomas to cry with his head bowed over his lap. Salt rivers coursed through the grooves between their joined fingers.

“I would not have it so,” Thomas exhaled once he calmed.

“What?” James croaked.

“Please understand that I cannot condone the blood on your hands nor delight in the carnage of your war,” said Thomas, now raising his head to unwaveringly look him in the eye, “but if I am honest, I would not rewrite your story. Because as long and dark and twisted as that road was, it delivered you back into my arms.”

“Thomas, what happened with your father, with Peter and Miranda…” said James, trailing off when he found himself unable to articulate those things again with Thomas so close. As if he could taint him by breathing the words on his skin.

“You… and Miranda,” said Thomas, biting out her name as if it caused him physical pain to say it, “endured the worst of betrayals, indignities, and loss. A person can only be subjected to so much misfortune before they are given over to their pain and their anger. They treated you callously and you repaid them in kind. I’m not turning a blind eye to what you have done, but I too have been driven to commit certain acts I am not proud of. I understand more than you may realize.”

This was the first that Thomas had alluded to his own hardships of the past decade. James was beyond relieved to see that his intrinsic goodness was still intact, but he was loath to imagine the ways in which the world might have endeavored to beat it out of him. Thomas was proving to be far more reticent than he, but James trusted that time would reveal the depth of those scars.

“Peter said you forgave him, years ago when he saw you at Bethlem.” James instantly regretted speaking the name of that place when Thomas visibly flinched at its mention.

“I did, but it wasn’t simple,” said Thomas. “I was so devastated by what he had done to us. When I saw him there, I experienced such fury that I could have throttled the life out of him had I not been shackled to my chair. I was a caged animal with no agency to act on my anger. In the end, I didn’t forgive him for his sake, but my own. I offered my forgiveness because the alternative would have killed me, consumed me from the inside out.”

“Yet you forgave him. I condemned him,” said James.

“You were not in the same position as I was. When Peter’s first betrayal came to light, his response was to betray your trust yet again and to do so in a most brutal and cowardly manner. I don’t think I could forgive him now knowing what you have told me.” Thomas paused, his brow furrowed. “What I am trying to say is that I have always seen your darkness as well as your light and loved you deeply because of it, not in spite of it. All I want is for you to see that capacity in me too, to see me as the flawed man that I am. You are not a monster, just as I am not a saint who would pass judgment on you.”

“I don’t see you as a saint,” said James, his voice breaking, “but to me, you are the sun.”

“If I am the sun, then you are the only thing that keeps me burning. I see and accept that you did what you did out of your love for me and the ideals we shared. I will not forgive you because your past is not mine to forgive. I only ask that you try to forgive yourself so that we might spend the time we have left together with a measure of peace and happiness.”

He uttered this sentiment with such conviction that James let his own tears fall; Thomas let go of his hands to cup his face, wiping them away with calloused thumbs before they could reach his beard. The tenderness of his touch made James feel like his insides were twisting in on themselves. Thomas was the only person he’d ever met whose kindness could steal his breath away in its intensity.

“Please tell me if I’m making you feel worse,” said Thomas with a watery smile. “If you want space you need only ask for it.”

“No, please don’t stop,” said James, uncaring of how desperate he sounded as he clasped Thomas’s hands to his face. Their warmth almost made him feel human. “It’s been so long since anyone’s touched me like this.”

“Have you had no one to hold you for all these years?” Thomas asked.

“Miranda and I took care of each other the best we could.”

“Although I am glad that you were able to take some comfort in one another, that’s not quite what I meant. For all the difficulty you’ve found in accepting it, we both know that you can only truly get what you need by sharing your body with another man.”

It still jolted him just a little, the openness with which Thomas could voice these things. But he wasn’t wrong. They were cut from the same cloth in that regard.

“I had hoped that you might find someone to give you that kind of affection in my absence. I thought perhaps Mr. Silver and yourself…”

“It wasn’t that way between us,” James cut in. That particular wound was still bleeding and he knew it would be some time before he could stem the flow. “Our relationship was complicated but it didn’t extend into the physical.”

“Love like that is never uncomplicated, and yes, it is all too clear to me that you did indeed love each other very much.”

It was nearly intolerable to continue speaking of Silver and the nature of his feelings towards the man, so he turned the question back on Thomas. “What about you? Did you have anyone?”

“Only a couple of times and only very briefly. After we were separated, anything less than what I shared with you felt hollow. Even though it was bordering on delusional, I always clung to the hope that we would find each other again one day. And now here we are.”

“Here we are,” repeated James. Even as the words came out, he scarcely believed them.

He went willingly as Thomas pulled him down until their foreheads met, a kind of touch that was achingly familiar despite having been so long starved of it.

“Whenever the loneliness became too much,” Thomas breathed tantalizingly against his lips, his eyes closed, “I would lay in the dark of my room and try to conjure my favorite memory of you.”

“What was the memory?” 

Would he even recognize himself in it now?

“It was the first time you let me take you. You were hesitant because you thought it too shameful to give into that need, yet still you surrendered to it. I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I can still recall it so sharply; how your thighs felt beneath my hands as you moved over me, the smell of your sweat, the way your hair looked when you let it loose about your shoulders. You were too lost in your pleasure to feel any shame then. I was so profoundly moved by you in that moment that even if everything else fades from memory, that will stay with me.”

They were both breathing hard now and James realized that he was positively blazing with arousal. 

He remembered it too, remembered how Thomas had looked up at him with such loving reverence. That night had been a turning point for him, when a part of himself he had tried to ignore finally clicked into place, like a key turning in a lock. Thomas had done that for him and he had understood then that there would never be anyone else.

Thomas had gifted him the inscribed copy of Meditations not a week later.

“Oh, Thomas,” said James, desire overtaking him. “Did you touch yourself when you thought of me?”

“Yes,” gasped Thomas, “but it was not enough, never enough. My God, how it feels to touch you now…”

Thomas tilted his head to seal his mouth over James’s, their lips and tongues gliding hotly together. The taste of him was familiar but the rasp of Thomas’s beard against his own was thrilling in its novelty. ‘Not enough’ echoed in James’s head and it was met with a resounding cry of ‘more, more.’

“I need more,” James managed to say aloud once they broke apart. His voice sounded ragged as he begged. “I need to feel you inside me. Please.”

James seemed to have succeeded in rendering Thomas speechless because Thomas could only stare at him, pupils blown and wet lips parted. He looked as undone as James felt and the full impact of those years wasted apart crushed down on him. Fate could not have been more savage in what it had chosen to rip from them. How had they not died without this?

When their lips met again, it was nearly brutal enough to bruise. The last time they had kissed with such fervor was when James had returned from Nassau after his three month expedition, the day their lives had ended. But this time, their coming together marked a new beginning rather than an end, and he would not be rash with it or take it for granted.

Thomas tore his lips away and took several deep breaths. “Before we go any further, I need to get us some oil.”

James’s faculties were so clouded with lust, it took a while for him to hear the words. He gripped Thomas’s arms a little tighter as he said, “Don’t leave me alone, not right now.”

His voice sounded wrecked and he saw Thomas’s eyes darken in response to his desperation. 

“Hush, I’m not leaving. I keep some in this room,” said Thomas, coloring as he added, “I use it on myself when the mood takes me.”

With that confession, James’s mind flooded with the most decadent images that in turn flooded his groin with a roiling surge of blood. 

“Do you feel the effect you have on me?” James asked, reaching for Thomas’s hand to press it against the bulge in his trousers. They both groaned at the contact. 

Thomas, torturously taking his hand away, rose from the creaking floorboards and went to rummage through his small chest of drawers.

With Thomas’s back to him, James’s awareness was fully concentrated on himself. The throbbing in his tight trousers was agonizing. He stood up and began tearing off his clothes. He moaned in relief once his member sprang free of its confines, painfully hard and flushed. He dared not touch himself for fear of finishing there and then. Just as he lifted his shirt over his head, Thomas turned around.

For a long moment, Thomas simply stood there, regarding James with an unreadable expression. Even though James would not exactly say he felt self-conscious in his nudity, he wondered with some trepidation what Thomas must make of him now. His body was changed immeasurably from the last time he had so bared himself to his lover’s eyes: his skin bore marks of age, battle, and exposure to the elements; his hair was shorn and his beard was fuller; parts of him that were once supple had hardened while other parts that were once firm had softened. He was tired, old, and worn and that was not something that Thomas could fail to see even by dim candlelight.

“That you should return to me at all is a miracle,” said Thomas as he took in the sight before him, his smile tugging apart the knot in James’s stomach, “but that you should return to me still whole, and healthy, and… so, so lovely… is more than I had any right to dream of. How lucky I am.”

Thomas approached him and lifted a finger to trace the scars that Singleton’s blade had left across his pectorals. James instinctively cupped his hand against the back of Thomas’s head when he lowered it to his chest, running his tongue wetly across the scar’s gnarled ridges. Thomas’s loving kindness once more brought him to the verge of weeping, but James held back his tears. There would be more time for those later, for now he was in need of a different kind of physical release.

Growing impatient with the yearning to relearn Thomas’s body in turn, James pulled his dirt-stained shirt from his breeches. Though it came with the sacrifice of separating Thomas’s lips from his skin, the removal of the shirt allowed James to look upon a torso that was much broader than he remembered, defined with densely corded muscle from long years working the fields. To see the evidence of such power and strength in a body he had thought long cold served to reaffirm Thomas’s realness to him. 

Thomas was right. How lucky they were.

Thomas, too, bore his share of scars. The ones adorning his wrists were the most unsettling; they were not formed from the quick cut of a knife but rather from prolonged abrasion. James had seen similar scars on the wrists of former prisoners and slaves who had endured the constant bite of metal bonds. As Thomas had done for him, he acknowledged these with open-mouthed kisses. Thomas gave a shuddering intake of breath when James clamped his mouth over the inside of his wrist and gently sucked at his thin, ruined skin.

Just when standing was starting to become unbearable, Thomas steered them towards his modest bed, impatiently stepping out of his breeches while he went. As Thomas lay back upon it, James thought he looked every bit the Greek deity, with his golden hair and powerful form. It took little coaxing for James to climb atop him, invitingly spreading his legs to straddle Thomas’s hips. Thomas, no doubt once again recalling that memory, settled his hands on James’s thighs, allowing them to sweep up against the grain of his ginger hair before taking the flesh in a firmer grip so that freckled skin warped beneath the pressure of each digit.

“How I adore your legs. I believe they are even thicker now,” Thomas purred, giving them another squeeze. James moaned lewdly as those same hands migrated to knead the flesh of his behind. “And your arse is thicker too. Good God, you will be the death of me.”

Thomas’s hands roamed all over James’s body, warming him as well as compromising his sanity. He was pleased that Thomas was as tactile as ever; he had never felt so safe and cared for than when those large, elegant hands were on him, touching him like he was something of genuine value. They ascended slowly from the curve of his arse up to his shoulder blades, then passed over his tense shoulders to his chest. From there, they ran through his chest hair and thumbed at his nipples before traveling still lower, caressing the gentle swell of his belly. His skin felt like it was on fire and his cock was throbbing.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked James as he guided Thomas’s hands closer to his groin.

“Forgetting, no; avoiding, yes,” said Thomas, smirking. With a kind of feral hunger, he eyed James’s heavy erection where it lay pillowed against his stomach, already leaking. In a gesture that was both enticing and filthy, Thomas used his finger to collect some of that fluid pooled on his own skin and brought it to his lips to taste it. “I want you to come only once you’ve been well and thoroughly fucked.”

“Then you had better hurry up and fuck me, because I won’t last much longer,” growled James, a distinctly Flint-like note of command in his voice. It appeared to have the desired effect on Thomas, who did not tarry any longer before coating his fingers in oil.

James lifted himself so that Thomas could reach between his legs. Clever fingers teasingly cupped his balls and stroked along his perineum before finding their mark. As eager as he was to ride Thomas’s cock, James couldn’t deny how much he enjoyed this quiet ritual. Here, Thomas’s hands were as thoughtful and insistent as they were with the rest of his body and he delighted in the inherent intimacy of it. Gradually, having managed to massage one, then two fingers past his entrance, Thomas pressed deep enough to hit that intense pleasure spot inside of him. The potency of that stimulation had him writhing and gasping almost immediately. Sensing that he was nearing the edge, James grabbed hold of Thomas’s forearm to still his ministrations. Graciously, Thomas took his cue and set about carefully stretching him with only the occasional pass over that sensitive place.

Thomas never rushed this. The first time they had done it, it had in part been Thomas’s way of tacitly acknowledging James’s insecurities about the act, making him feel understood rather than caught out. But even then and every time thereafter, this process was unhurried mostly for physical reasons. Being a tall and solidly built man, Thomas’s body was well above average proportions. He was conscious enough of his size to always make sure James was relaxed and loose enough that there would be no undue pain from their coupling.

Once Thomas was satisfied that James was prepared, he reached again for the oil. This time, James intercepted it before Thomas could take any.

“Let me,” said James, liberally covering his own hand with the oil before reaching behind himself to grasp Thomas’s erection.

Thomas truly did have a magnificent cock, long and thick and finely sculpted. Oh, how he had missed it, the feel of it in his palm, the taste of it on his tongue, the stretch of it inside him. He wished they could fuck languidly for hours, the way he most enjoyed it, but this night was not the night. They needed too much. 

James slicked his lover’s shaft, pumping it just enough so that his attentions wiped the composure off Thomas’s face. Now, he looked as wrecked as James felt, arching breathlessly into his touch. Unable to take further pause, James aligned Thomas’s cock with his opening and then slowly began to lower himself onto it. It still burned where the head breached him, but it only served to heighten the thrill of liquid pleasure that rippled up his spine as he took it further inside. James kept his eyes closed while he sank all the way down until fully seated in Thomas’s lap; when he reopened them, he saw once again how the world looked in color. 

They were still for a time and without the distraction of movement, James became hyper-aware of the energy thrumming though their bodies as if Thomas’s were an extension of his own. He planted his hands on Thomas’s chest, feeling with rapture the way his ribcage expanded and contracted with steady breath and the vigorous thump of his heartbeat beneath. James locked eyes with Thomas and he knew they were both sharing in that same exhilaration of being alive, alive, alive.

Thomas was the first to move, shifting his hips carefully upwards with his hands on James’s hips for better control. James groaned, giving Thomas the encouragement he needed to drive into him more deliberately. They soon found their rhythm and James bore down to meet him thrust for thrust. The force of their joining was relatively gentle, but it nevertheless punched the air from his lungs.

Eventually, Thomas stayed his own motions to let James ride him at his own pace. Rather than continue to move up and down, he began to roll his hips in earnest, keeping Thomas’s length as deep inside him as possible. James, hands still braced against Thomas’s torso, leaned more heavily against him for greater leverage. His palms were hot and damp with their combined perspiration, the heady scent of which hung in the already humid air around them. Rocking his hips with fluid purpose, he angled himself so that Thomas’s shaft dragged sweetly over that sensitive spot almost constantly. James’s pleasure was such that his entire body trembled with it, his passage clenching desperately around Thomas’s cock.

“Oh, fuck,” grunted Thomas, grinding himself into James like he was chasing a closeness beyond the capabilities of the human form. Finally, he reached for James’s cock. “Come for me, love.”

All it took was for Thomas to jerk him once, twice, and James was spilling thickly over his hand and abdomen. Involuntary wanton moans poured from his lips like dark wine and Thomas, pulling him in for a passionate kiss, swallowed them down. Thomas fucked him through his shuddering aftershocks and when he found his own release, James felt the pulse of him keenly in his over-sensitized channel. His mind went blank as he let his body sing.

Once they had floated down from their peaks, they allowed themselves to remain connected for a few more minutes, both of them unwilling to separate. Alas, the position became untenable for James as fatigue washed over him, so he used his remaining energy to pull off of Thomas and fall to his side on the bed. Thomas took the opportunity to arise and walk on uneasy legs to his wash basin. He returned with a cool cloth that he used to wipe them both down. When he finished, he tossed the rag carelessly to the floor and lay down facing James.

Perhaps it was because James had reached a point of such bone-weary exhaustion that he could no longer muster the will to suppress all he was feeling. Perhaps it was because Thomas was looking into his eyes the same way he had a lifetime ago, just before he had kissed him and irrevocably changed his entire sense of being.

Perhaps it was because Thomas’s presence now felt real enough that he could give voice to it without fearing that the person he loved most would vanish before his eyes once it passed his lips.

“You were dead. All this time, I thought you were dead.”

It surprised James, at first, the violent gasping sob that escaped his throat. It’s harshness made him wonder just how long he’d been suppressing it. Soon after, another followed, then another, and then another, until he was crying unrestrainedly into Thomas’s shoulder. Thomas held him as he shook, all the while murmuring softly about nothing and tracing serene patterns over his freckles.

For as long as he could remember, James had felt that there was some pernicious malignancy that resided in the very core of himself. It was a wild and fiendish thing with a voracious appetite and a hellish fury if provoked. Miranda and Silver had both known that beast inside of him. Miranda had held the power to soothe it with one hand and with the other, unleash it. Silver, in his becoming, had found in it something kindred to his own nature. Once they had both become lost to him, he believed there would be no further relief from it. That beast would remain coiled around his heart, whimpering in impotent rage and misery until it drained the last of his life away. 

But Thomas… Thomas had just illuminated those dark corners and proclaimed that he did not see a beast at all, but instead something that was human and worthy of being loved. And with all the vastness of his compassion and depths of understanding, Thomas embraced him completely, piecing together those seemingly irreconcilable fragments until no part of James was left untethered or unwanted. 

As he lay there with Thomas now, safely wrapped up in his strong arms, he had hope that he might be a whole person again someday. 

“I lost it,” James said softly once his tears subsided. He lifted up his head from where it had been tucked beneath Thomas’s chin. 

“Lost what, darling?” asked Thomas.

“Meditations. The copy you gave me,” said James, feeling something akin to grief as he spoke. “It was the last thing I had left of you, Thomas, and it burned.”

“You kept it, all this time?”

Thomas smiled at him then, in a manner that was simultaneously as mournful as it was joyful. James was so taken by that expression, he brought his thumb to trace the creases at the corner of Thomas’s eye.

“But it isn’t the last you have of me, don’t you see? The book may have been lost, but I am not. I’m here with you, as incredible as that is,” said Thomas, blue eyes boring into his. “I meant what I wrote and mean it still. I feel it with everything that I am. You won’t ever lose that.”

And when Thomas whispered those sacred words against his lips, James believed him.

**Author's Note:**

> What I learned about myself while writing this fic: 1) I may have just a little infatuation with Thomas’s hands, 2) a teensy fetish for James’s thighs, and 3) a small kink for direct contact between numbers 1 and 2. I thought I should be honest about that. Know no shame, right?


End file.
